


Straight On 'Til Morning

by Thistlerose



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Kirktastic Band, Star Trek: Into Darkness Spoilers, Trekstock Prompt 1: Words to Live By
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 16:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim's mother read <i>Peter Pan</i> to him when he was seven.  While he enjoyed the book - especially the pirates - one plot point would haunt him his entire life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Straight On 'Til Morning

**Author's Note:**

> Artwork by Sail_aweigh. Many thanks to Lauriegilbert for beta reading!

~*~

When Jim was seven, his mother read _Peter Pan_ to him. He could probably have read it just fine on his own, or so he imagined; he’d been reading since he was five, after all, and knew how to look up the words he didn’t understand. But she’d offered, and she’d used that carefully noncommittal tone, which Jim was already coming to associate with her feelings of guilt over having to leave him and his brother. So he said yes, to please her, but it ended up being all right because he got to snuggle against her on the battered living room sofa, and he got to close his eyes and just listen to the story, losing himself in the adventures of Peter and Wendy and the Lost Boys. His mother had a great reading voice; she read slowly enough for him to follow along, but not _too_ slowly, like she thought he was stupid or something. She also made it sound like she was interested in the story, even though she’d probably read it a bunch of times already, and she did all the characters’ voices.

She did a funny Smee, and an elegantly menacing Captain Hook.

Jim liked the book – especially the parts with the pirates – but when his mother got to the part where Wendy was sure her mother had left the nursery window open, so she and her brothers could come back home, he became fidgety. He didn’t know why, but something about that part bothered him. He squirmed against the sofa cushions, whining quietly in his throat, and after a few moments his mother stopped reading and glanced down at him.

“You okay there, buddy?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he sighed.

She set the book down on her lap and turned toward him, her blue-gray eyes narrowed with concern. “You sure? You feeling okay?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Jim insisted. “Keep reading.”

She lifted her eyebrows.

“Um. Please.”

She flashed him a brief, quirky smile, and then leaned down to kiss the top of his head. Since Sam wasn’t there to make fun, Jim didn’t try to stop her from babying him. When she straightened, he put his arms around her waist, resting his cheek against her ribs. He could feel her heartbeat and smell her lavender body lotion. 

“Okay,” she said, opening the book again. “Where was I?”

Jim’s gaze skimmed over the page. “There,” he said. “‘Or we might tell how Peter saved Tiger Lily's life in the Mermaids’ La - lagoon…’ What’s a lagoon?”

“Oh, it’s like…” She tipped her head back against the sofa cushions and closed her eyes, as if trying to picture it so she could explain it. “It’s like a small body of water that’s kind of separated from a bigger body of water, by rocks, I guess, or little islands, or a reef. Want me to find you a picture?”

“Just read.”

“Okay.” And she did, for the rest of that cold, gray afternoon.

* * * *

Afterward, Jim tried not to think about Mrs. Darling and her open window, and during the day, when he had a lot to distract him, he mostly succeeded. But at night, when he lay in bed with his blanket tucked up to his chin, and his toy elephant squashed against his side, he started to think about it, and then he couldn’t stop.

What if Mrs. Darling had given up and closed the window? Or what if Peter had closed it, to make Wendy and her brothers think that their mother didn’t want them back? What if Wendy had returned home to find the nursery window closed and latched? What would she have thought? Where would she have gone? Jim supposed she could’ve gone back to Neverland, which wouldn’t have been so bad in his opinion – in fact, it sounded a lot better than Nineteenth Century London – but she’d wanted to go home.

It was a particularly windy night, with gusts that seemed strong enough to flatten the Iowa hills. Jim could feel the house quaking around him, the windows rattling like dice in a cup. It seemed impossible that anyone could sleep through all this tumult, and yet, just a few minutes ago, when he’d gotten up to pee, Jim had heard loud snores from Sam’s bedroom. 

Sam could sleep through anything, Jim thought sourly, clutching his elephant. He wondered if his mother was still awake. He hadn’t seen a light under her door, but maybe she was lying wide-eyed in bed, just like him. Maybe she couldn’t sleep either.

It would make sense if she couldn’t, Jim thought. Her shore leave was almost over; in three days, she’d be heading back out into space aboard the _USS LeGuin_ , and he and Sam would be back at their mean Uncle Frank’s house. Jim pictured his mother on a shuttle, the kind that Starfleet used for away missions. He’d been in one once, on a school trip to the Riverside Shipyards. It had been _small_ , barely bigger than their living room, though it had been larger than the shuttle he’d been born in. (He’d looked up the specs when he’d gotten home.)

He thought of his mother in one of those shuttles, buffeted by cosmic winds and ribbons of rainbow-colored gas. Then, as he finally began to sink into sleep, he thought of her shuttle being tossed about by the winds that raged outside. Violent blasts sent her spinning out of control, and steep banks of granite clouds rose up to smash her shuttle to pieces, but she was Jim’s mother, so she didn’t get scared. She knew that all she had to do was get through the storm, and then she’d find the window open for her, because Jim would always wait…

* * * *

Or so he thought when he was seven. After his mother left, Jim did leave his window open for a few nights – just a crack – but then Sam started complaining about the draft, and Uncle Frank told him he’d better close that window or else. So Jim closed it, but he didn’t lock it, and that seemed like a fair compromise.

At least until his mother forgot his birthday. 

Well, okay, she didn’t _forget_ (how could she forget? that was also the day Jim’s father had died; she could never forget) she tried to explain two weeks later. The _LeGuin_ had been performing delicate maneuvers in the Katheira System, and all power had been diverted to shields. No non-emergency communications had been allowed.

“I’m sorry, buddy. Really. I should’ve thought ahead—” 

“Yeah, you should’ve.”

Her mouth pinched closed, and Jim was sorry he’d snapped at her. But he wasn’t sorry he’d kept his window locked for the past two weeks. It served her right.

“I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Next time I’m Earth-side, we’ll do something really fun. Maybe we’ll go up to Bozeman to see all the Zefram Cochrane stuff they have up there. Or maybe I’ll take you and Sam to San Francisco. You’ve never seen the ocean. And I can show you all around Starfleet Headquarters. Tarsus IV is a little far, but I have a cousin who—”

He let her ramble on, and slowly his jaw unclenched. He was still angry, but she was trying, and it was true that he’d never seen the ocean…

He left his window open that night, and for a few weeks after; he stuffed an old pillowcase into the crack below his bedroom door, so Sam and Frank wouldn’t find out. When Sam asked about the pillowcase, Jim told it him it was because he snored too loud. Sam punched him in the shoulder, but Jim just laughed because, hey, it wasn’t like it was a _lie…_

And so it went … until Winona’s shore leave was canceled. Klingons were making trouble along the Neutral Zone, and Starfleet couldn’t spare any officers.

That was the story Jim told himself, anyway. It probably wasn’t the real story, but he’d stopped listening about halfway through his mother’s recorded message, right after she said she wasn’t coming.

So, Klingons. And the next time, Jim made up a story about a plague ravaging the Andorian world of Weyhtahn, and his mother was working on finding a cure. The third time, it was Orion pirates hijacking the _LeGuin._ The fourth time ... he didn’t bother making anything up, because by then he’d decided that he didn’t care.

He’d stopped leaving his window open after the incident with the Klingons, or whatever it really was that had kept his mother from keeping her promise. He never left it open for her again, and eventually, as he grew older, he forgot that he ever had.

He forgot about it completely, until he died.

* * * *

He floated through a gray world, neither dark nor light, neither warm nor cold. _Neither here nor there,_ he thought. If this was death, he was unimpressed. Then again, he wasn’t scared and he wasn’t in pain anymore, so at least it was an improvement over _dying_. He wondered if this was all there was, if he’d just float along forever, like a particle on the edge of an ever-expanding universe. He had no memory of arriving here – for all he knew, he’d been floating for a thousand years and his crew, whether they’d defeated Khan or not, were as dead as he was – so it stood to reason there’d be no ending.

He’d never really considered the possibility of an afterlife, had never entertained the idea of meeting his father or Admiral Pike again. (And why either of them would want to see him, after all the mistakes he’d made, was beyond his imagination.) This, he supposed, was not _too_ bad. At least there was no fire and brimstone. Though, on further reflection, he decided that something out of Dante would at least be interesting. 

He wished that Spock were here. It didn’t matter which Spock; either would have some interesting insights to share.

He wished that Bones were here. Bones would crack jokes about pointy-eared men with pitchforks, or the lack thereof.

He wished that Nyota were here. She’d roll her eyes and tell him to stop being so selfish and maudlin. And she’d be right, of course, but that didn’t stop him from wishing he could see their faces again.

Maybe, if he ever came to the end of this … whatever it was…

He floated on alone, and eventually he was able to discern subtle differences in the gray above and the gray below. Below – far, far below, it seemed – the gray was denser, colder. But it seemed to shimmer in places, like water struck briefly by thin rays of light. Above, the gray was softer, almost … fluffy. 

_Clouds,_ he thought, and for the first time in what felt like forever, hope wriggled inside him. He was floating between sea and sky. And these were real things, with beginnings and ends. So, all of this – this gray _between_ -ness – had to have a beginning and an ending too.

No sooner had that thought occurred to him, than he felt a breeze against his cheek, cool and damp like the morning. Overhead, the clouds parted to reveal a star. Just one, but its light pierced all the way to the water far below, creating a glittering path for Jim to follow.

_To home,_ he thought. 

To his ship and his crew. His family.

But what he pictured was a window.

* * * *

Bones was there when he opened his eyes, and Spock and Nyota too. They pressed around him, eager to welcome him back, but anxious about exciting him too much. Even Spock seemed anxious, which would have made Jim laugh if he hadn’t been so profoundly tired.

He listened to their words and tried to respond – he had a question, an important one – but his eyelashes seemed to be weighted with lead. They dragged his lids inexorably downward, and it was impossible not to sink back into sleep.

* * * *

When he awoke again, his mother was there. At the sight of her – so much older-looking, so careworn – tiny claws seemed to sink into his throat and grip tightly, preventing him from making anything but the most feeble of sounds.

“Oh, Jim. Jimmy.” Winona’s hands were cool and dry against his forehead. “I won’t baby you, I promise, but—” Tears glinted in her eyes. “Oh my God, Jim. I thought you were dead.”

_I was dead,_ he thought. He couldn’t remember any of it, except for the journey back. The clouds and the sea, the star and the window.

The window.

His hands twitched under the blanket, but he couldn’t get them free. He tried to turn his head against the pillow, but even that was too difficult. Frustrated, he sighed.

“What is it, Jim? Should I call Doctor McCoy? Do you need anything?”

Jim swallowed and tried again. “…zzzit open?” he managed to croak.

“Is what…? Is the door…? Oh, do you mean the window? Yes, it’s open. Are you cold?”

“No,” he whispered and, satisfied, he closed his eyes.

He couldn’t see Winona’s smile, but he heard it in her voice as she stroked the hair back from his forehead, “We kept it open for you, since the weather’s been so nice. Thought a little California sun and that ocean breeze might do you some good.” 

Yes. Now that she’d mentioned it, he could feel the sunlight on his cheek, could practically taste the brine in the air … though he might only have been imagining the latter.

Winona hesitated, then said softly and a little sadly, “I told you we’d get here. Remember? It was a long time ago.”

Of course he remembered. He remembered all of it. He wanted to tell her that, and also that he forgave her, but he really was too tired. Knowing that he’d awaken again, knowing that she’d be there when he did, he let himself slip back into dreaming. Pirate ships and mermaid lagoons. And a star to guide him homeward.

5/28/13


End file.
